Opine Away

District 9 movie

Not bad…

Half of D-9 is like a documentary. At first, in my opinion (of course…) it is stretching the documentary like part too much, to a point I was thinking “well, where’ s the action part?”.

The casting of Sharlto Copley is excellent. He plays his character and develop it in an excellent way, in looks and in behavior.

I find the aliens looks including “the hand” unoriginal and a bit of a cliché - maybe intentionally, trying to create a familiar feeling to it, but I think it was almost like a parody about aliens…but just marginally.

Other than the alien look (something between a character from “Pirates of the Caribbean and Predator”) and their hands (any 50s sci-fi movie…),  the fighting machine is a “Alien” à la Sigourney Weaver style, “The Fly” like transformation (though less disgusting than Jeff Goldblum’s) and Independence Day spaceships.

I enjoyed the South Africa location, accent, Afrikaans, Nigerian and  alien language mix and the bureaucratic absurdness 1984/Twelve monkeys/Brazil style in the main character nomination  and his behavior.

It’s an enjoyable movie, with some “blow ‘em up” action, with a refreshing  (if not original) approach. Go and enjoy.

L.

The movie 9 photo montage

9,  Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov animated movie, with voices by Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly and others, to a story and directed by Shane Acker.

Technically this movie is beautiful. The animation, from facial expressions to body movements in action scenes, expulsions, gasses and lighting effects, the artistic and atmosphere creating scenery is just amazing. To anyone that ever did anything with material, texture and light in graphics or animation, the quality and realism is just so excellent.

But the visuals are not the only thing we expect from a movie. The story, though it starts excellent, and has many great elements in it, just doesn’t hold through the movie, has too much of unclear elements, (risk of a sort of a spoiler alert here….) and ends in a somewhat lack-of-ending holistic way that leaves you with a “hu?” at the end. To me, it seemed as the story teller couldn’t come up with a good ending, so he left it open-ended with enough unexplained things to make the viewer not admitting to his friends he didn’t understand the ending….

I was trying to figure out who this movie is aimed at. Small kids are definitely not a good target audience. Teenagers will roll their eyes if they’ll even go (I doubt it). Adults will find parts that will “talk” to them (the “German” nation, the characters etc.), but will be disappointed with the plot - so if you look form a commercial aspect, who is it aimed at?

So, the only answer I have is the artistic audience, which will definitely enjoy the work. So my take of this - if you want to go and appreciate the art and technique, you’ll really enjoy this movie, otherwise, yes, some good action, some elements of a good plot and a few jokes, but nothing the holds throughout the film, and definitely not to the end, if it can be called an end….but it looks great….

L.